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Pastor Kaye's Blog

When life doesn’t make sense…

What do you do when life doesn’t make sense? When a young (read under 60) person dies suddenly. When a youth goes from being an A student to being in jail. When good, hard-working people can’t find a job and end up homeless. When a teenager commits suicide. When people end up alone and lonely in nursing homes. I’ve heard all of these personal stories, and more, in just the last few days. It’s disheartening.

People look to me for hope and answers. We all wonder, where is God when life doesn’t make sense? Even all the things I believe to be true feel inadequate in the face of such senselessness sometimes. I believe that God doesn’t cause “bad” things to happen. I believe that God is constantly working to bring each of us to a higher awareness of self, spirit, and life. I believe that we are never alone, but are surrounded by the loving energy of God which often manifests in people, music, animals,”coincidences”, and so many other things. I believe that God loves us, no matter what, and that God will help us get through – one agonizing step at a time.

I have had months (in the not-too-distant past) where I cried every day. Days where I yelled at God using multiple expletives. Weeks where I couldn’t believe that anything good could come of my life and wondered if it was worth it. I wasn’t perfect, but I’d tried to be a good person and everything ended up all messed up… it made no sense.

Only in hindsight can I see how intricately God was working in my life. From the people placed in my path, to the books I read, to the music that sustained me, to the new life that gradually unfolded before me. Every choice I made, some of them better than others, became part of the formula for who I could become. Nothing was wasted, no experience, no joy, no mistake, no hurt, no relationship… all of it is woven into the fabric of who I am today. I am under no illusions that I’m done, a finished product. No way! I humbly understand that life will always be filled with challenges, that I will always choose how to face them, and that God will take whatever I give her and help me to move forward, to learn and to grow. I just wish like the dickens that it wasn’t so painful sometimes.

All of that to say that when life doesn’t make sense, God is still there weaving the complicated stories of our lives into beautiful patterns that can sometimes only be appreciated from a distance. We just need to have hope, to keep going, to keep loving, and to give God the best we can to work with. There will be better tomorrows.